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Mining For Gold: Fixing Up An Abandoned Project Mustang For Goodies To Harvest Later


Mining For Gold: Fixing Up An Abandoned Project Mustang For Goodies To Harvest Later

Rich at Deboss Garage has Bronco fever. He wants to build one badly, a full-sizer with a late-model mill under the hood, all the bells and whistles, you know…the good stuff. Just two problems. One is the pandemic…due to COVID-19, the border between Canada and the United States is closed. If you watched our coverage of Rocky Mountain Race Week this year, you might have noticed that violent Nissan GT-R…that car got stranded in the States because of this cute little virus. Which leads to the second issue: most Ford Broncos that are in the Great White North that aren’t restored beauties are a stunning shade of rust. Seriously, chances are good that any 1978-1996 Ford Bronco they could find locally would look like the truck that got hauled up onto a boat on Deadliest Catch. Nobody wants to play with a rolling advertisement to tetanus, not even die-hard Canadians.

So, until the border opens and they can get a sun-cooked but complete Bronco from somewhere in the States, they will focus on the engine portion of the program. That part, they had no trouble finding: a 2005 Ford Mustang project that had been in a state of limbo for a few years was acquired for ten grand in Canadian bucks and dragged to the shop. On the surface, it’s red Plasti-Dipped hide, slapped-on body kit and spaghetti wiring throw up more red flags than a first date where she tells you she wants to have your kids. But looking deeper, there’s a lot of promise: a Boss 302 crate engine, a Tremec six-speed, Brembos, a Borla exhaust…it’s a parts gold-mine, so long as the parts weren’t utterly destroyed in this project car attempt! Rich gets to work on waking up the engine to see if it’s worth ripping out of the car here:


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